Biodiesel, Part 2: Environmental Activism

I am on my second tank of B20 biodiesel now and things are working fine so far. Gas mileage increased a bit to an average of 43mpg but not sure whether that's because of the biodiesel or I was simply driving a bit more conservatively. Either way, I thought I'd buy a few stickers and boast a bit about the fact that I am doing something good for the environment.

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Originally uploaded by jmeyer

On that note, the San Jose Mercury News had an interesting article about trying to do good for the environment. It mentioned California's efforts in trying to build up a greener fleet of vehicles. The chose to go with a bunch of vehicles that are capable of running on regular gasoline or Ethanol-gasoline blends like the Chevy/GMC Flexfuel vehicles. When those vehicles run on such blends they put out much less CO2 albeit at higher cost which the taxpayer has to pay for. However, one problem they did not consider is that there are virtually no fueling stations that carry such blends so that these Flexfuel vehicles are solely run on regular gasoline. Not only are they less efficient than the previous (smaller) fleet vehicles they now output more CO2, at higher cost. Talk about misguided environmental activism.

This is my problem with all these alternative fuels like ethanol, hydrogen and natural gas. The infrastructure simply isn't there yet and they require engine modifications or simply different engines altogether. Overall not very practical. Biodiesel on the other hand doesn't have these drawbacks. No engine modifications are required and if you are ever in an area where there is no Biodiesel available, you simply get regular diesel for one tank. The worst that can happen is that the fuel filter gets clogged which is not that tragic.

So, instead of wasting all that money on the new fleet that currently can't fulfill its potential, they should have invested that money into solar or by fuel efficient vehicles. Oh wait, that pretty much means they would have had to purchase Japanese cars instead of the American POS. Not sure what the reasons were but I very much hope that doing good for the environment from the government is hindered by who makes the car...